Transcending labels with shadow work.

Aren’t you sick of the wars that go on between different races, religions and classes? Millions of people have been killed due to the differences listed above. The total disconnect many people have against anything that is different than they are is, in my opinion, the worst thing that we as humans have done. If we respected each other and did all things with love we would have a totally different world. It’s the exact opposite of evolution. It’s like a de-evolution of our species to be stuck in old dogma. Beliefs are just that. They are not truths. Many people can’t distinguish one from another.

A universal truth is something that can be proven over and over again, regardless of circumstances. For example, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Another universal truth is that human beings are mortal.

If it can’t be proven time and time gain, it is not a truth. It may be that person’s truth and reality but it’s not a universal truth. Therefore, we can’t (or shouldn’t) argue that another person’s beliefs are wrong.

Can people not see that we are all part of the human species just experiencing different lives? What a boring and terrible world it would be if we all were the same!

Imagine any other species being exactly the same. What if every bird was the same? They looked they same, sounded the same and are indistinguishable from one another all over the world. Now imagine every human being the same. What would be the point of living? Yet, humans, for thousands of years, still have a tribal mentality in that anything that is different from them is, not just wrong, but, when religion gets involved, is evil.

You can have a community of people, for example a church congregation, that will excommunicate a member who they previously loved and cherished, if that member reveals they have a slightly different viewpoint than the rest. Even within a family, if one is different enough they can be cast out for good. Never to be spoken to again.

The person cast out has to suffer one of the worst experiences known to man which is to be unloved, unaccepted and condemned from their group. Why? Because we can’t accept each other’s beliefs.

We don’t have to believe anything we don’t want to. However, neither does anyone else! The greatest things about being a human is our ability to think, reason, create and experience emotions and our senses. We need to start using our minds to create a better world. It begins with each one of us.

Why are some people able to transcend labels and look a person in the eyes and see their soul, while others can’t see past their mental image of them (different, wrong, evil) when they haven’t even allowed themselves to get to know them?

From a sociological point of view my first answer would be that we learn what we see. However, I don’t share my parents beliefs nor does my husband share his parents beliefs.

Then what is it?

In part, it is our limited understanding (ignorance) of ourselves.

I’ve been looking into Carl Jung’s theory about shadow work. He believed that we all have a shadow self.

The short explanation of the shadow self is this: We are born without a shadow. As we grow and notice things around us like our parents and surroundings we start to develop an identity. As babies, we like the sound of our parents voice. Anyone that doesn’t sound like our parents doesn’t give us the same comfort. We therefore learn to favor their voices. Later, we subconsciously make decisions about what we like and don’t like until eventually we are who we are. We then reject anything that is not like our identity. We decided we didn’t want a trait (subconsciously) therefore that trait becomes something we dislike in others.

Until we can look into our shadow self and get to know who we really are and why, we will continue to dislike anything in others that is also in our shadow.

That doesn’t mean what’s in our shadow is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that our subconscious mind determined it wouldn’t be part of our identity. Let’s take being creative as an example. If, within our family system, being creative was frowned upon, we may have tucked that part of ourselves into our shadow and our identity became that of an academic. We then view creative people as less favorable than academics. Can you see how that works?

If we can all realize that we are shaped by our subconscious minds and that it could have went in any direction based on where we were raised and by whom, we can start to see that truly, we are all one.

I could have been you and you could have been me. So who are we fighting? Our shadows.

This is one of the topics I want to cover in my blog. If you’re interested in doing some self-healing or introspective work and following my journey of introspection and what I’m learning, please be sure follow.

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2 thoughts on “Transcending labels with shadow work.”

To really transcend labels, we do need to search for ourselves in others and connect with similarities and be open to learning new things from the differences. Living in Toronto, I see so much diversity but sometimes I wish the sharing and exploring of different cultures ran a lot deeper than trying different foods.